Canadian middleweight Jason (The Athlete) MacDonald scored his comeback win last time out. Alan (The Talent) Belcher thinks it's his turn when the two veterans meet at the UFC's Battle of the Bayou.
Saturday's televised main event at the New Orleans Convention Center features welterweight Jake Shields (26-5-1), who lost to champion Georges St-Pierre at UFC 129 in Toronto, against Jake (The Juggernaut) Ellenberger (25-5).
MacDonald also featured on the April card at Toronto's Rogers Centre. Fighting for the first time in almost a year, he impressed by submitting Ryan Jensen in the first round.
For MacDonald (26-14), just getting back in the cage was a victory.
The 36-year-old from Red Deer, Alta., had two steel plates and 10 screws inserted in his left ankle courtesy of a gruesome accident in a loss at UFC 113 in Montreal. Fighting John Salter, MacDonald's leg got caught as he was being taken down. He broke both the tibia and fibula and tore both ligaments off the bone.
This time it's Belcher (15-5) making the comeback – from two sets of eye surgery.
For a while he didn't know if he would be able to fight again. And there were times when he didn't know if he wanted to.
But restored to health, he is savouring his return to action.
"Just getting one more fight is even amazing," Belcher said. "I feel like I'm starting over, getting my first fight again. I feel kind of nervous and the nervous energy, I think, is going to translate into a sharper mind."
The 27-year-old from Biloxi, Miss., defeated Canadian Patrick Cote on the same May 2010 card in Montreal in which MacDonald went down.
The next month, Belcher was training in Brazil in advance of a fight with jujitsu ace Demian Maia when he started having blurry vision.
"At first I was hoping it would just go away," he recalled. "It was one of those things where [I thought]I've got something in my eye, I can't see. I was just in denial about. I thought it would go away. The next morning I woke up, it was worse. So I knew something was wrong."
He saw some local doctors who diagnosed a detached retina and advised him to return home and "get your surgery fast."
"It was all bad from there, man," Belcher said.
Belcher credits his surgeon, Dr. Henry Semple of Mobile, Ala., for fixing him up.
While initially there was no talk of fighting, Semple allowed Belcher to start grappling in December and January. He followed up with monthly checkups on the retina, taking extra time to ensure that the surgery had worked.
He wasn't back to full training until March or April.
"I was feeling pretty sluggish and pretty off, but within a few weeks I was starting to feel like my old self again."